March for our Lives

Few things give me more hope for the future than our young people of today. Too often teenagers are dismissed for being too young to have an opinion and not having enough life experience to know what they are talking about. Well the teenagers and young people in America who stood up to protest the gun problem in their country really do know what they are talking about and really are determined to make a difference.

Some like the incredible Emma Gonzales have experienced the terror that guns can cause at first hand. Emma was one of the students to escape with her life after a school shooting in Florida that left 17 students dead. In what will go down as one of the most powerful speeches in history, Emma addressed the crowd with a period of six minutes and 20 seconds of silence (equating to the time it took for the gun man to slaughter the 17 innocents).

The March for our Lives is about the true America, not the America the gun lobby want it to be. The essence of what the country can be and should be has been lost amid the battles to interpret the wording of the second amendment of ‘the right to bear arms’ and the legal arguments over how to apply the constitution to a modern age with modern weapons. America is a country built on freedom and one of the most fundamental freedoms of any country that wants to claim the label of civilised is the freedom for its citizens to live without fear.

That is what the young people of America are fighting for – the right to live without fear. And with the determination and bravery displayed by so many of those marching for their freedom then perhaps finally we can start to believe that the days of the NRA are numbered. And with the next generation will come a new America. An America that cares more about the rights of its people to live peacefully without fear than it does their right to own semi automatic weapons.

Roanna Carleton Taylor